Is Government Health Care Constitutional

In it current forms it is highly unlikely the bills yet to be reconciled would stand up to a Constitutional challenge. Bribing members of Congress for votes? Our tax payers to cover the Medicare for the people of Louisiana and Nebraska forever? Fore to purchase? This is the result of the progressive movement run amok, J.C.

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Expect the Unexpected from Iran

February 9, 2010

By Amanda Reinecker

Heritage Foundation

In his text book, The Arab Mind on page 172, the Author, Raphael Patai, explains the dichotomy of Arab reality as it pertains to thoughts and deeds. In essence, thinking about doing something, talking about it are often the same as doing it.  How many times have we heard Ahmadinejad tell us of things he plans to do.  Will this be the same on February 11th?  In a short time we will know.  Random thoughts while waiting for hopefully another non event, J.C.

Iran’s hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently warned that his country will deliver a harsh blow to “global arrogance” on Thursday, February 11, the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. But what on earth did he mean?

Heritage Middle East expert Jim Phillips weighs in on what Iran’s latest provocation likely means. He writes:

In Ahmadinejad’s twisted mind, Iran is a world power that leads a global alliance against a United States that seeks to dominate the world. Any action that signifies Iranian independence and progress on the political, military, nuclear, technological or economic fronts therefore is a blow against the United States. Ahmadinejad already has lauded the launch of an Iranian research rocket [last week] — a “big event” and more ballistic missile tests may follow. Or perhaps an announcement on the nuclear front.

One thing seems certain: the “annual regime-supported demonstrations in support of Iran’s Islamic revolution, with their customary chants of ‘death to America’, will not be the harsh blow that Ahmadinejad has in mind,” Phillips explains.

» Get the latest on Iran plus all the facts at Heritage’s Iran Briefing Room

Some signs suggest the blow will be “an announcement on the nuclear front.” Just today, Iranian officials announced that they have initiated the process for making higher-grade nuclear fuel. The Obama administration announced today that it is pushing for a new U.N. Security Council resolution targeting Iran’s nuclear program more directly and firmly. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Fox News that, though the process would be expedited, it could take weeks. This announcement also sparked concern overseas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Iran’s defiant nuclear progress with a call for “crippling sanctions [which] must be applied right now.” Even Russia, which has often defended Iran, scolded the rogue country for its nuclear provocations.

Iran may be faced with a harsh blow itself, not from the free world but from within. Iran’s opposition leaders and their Green Movement, who made their debut to the world during the controversial elections last summer, continue to bravely demand long-overdue reforms in Iran.

“If large numbers of Iranians demonstrate on February 11 in support of the Green Movement,” writes Phillips, “that will be a harsh blow to Ahmadinejad and his thuggish regime.”

Source:

Next to Sarah Palin, This is the Most Feared Woman by the Left in Washington

Bachmann: “So Much for Fiscal Responsibility…”

Last Thursday (Feb. 4), members of the U.S. House of Representatives had a no-brainer in front of them that would have proved once and for all that they really cared about fiscal responsibility - they should have voted “NO” to raise our debt limit as a nation by $1.9 trillion to a whopping $14 trillion. Instead of looking at ways to restrain their spending – like most Americans are doing right now – Congress has decided to saddle more federal debt to the backs of American workers. Minnesota families are strapped enough as it is and that’s why I voted no on this irresponsible measure. A vote to raise the national debt limit without significantly reigning in spending is Washington at its worst. 

More Spending on the Way

Last week, President Obama released a budget that will boost the deficit to a record $1.6 trillion next year alone. That’s an astonishing 10.6% of GDP, the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II. Worse yet, the budget doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it by fiscal year 2019.

We simply cannot expect the path of spending bills, stimulus packages and useless commissions to recover our weakened economy.  If President Obama were listening to the American people, he would take the budgeting of our bloated government seriously and look for options beyond more spending financed by taxes on businesses and hard working Americans.

For his part, the President is at least acknowledging that we need to get our spending under control, but he’s not backing up his words with substantive action. He wants to freeze non-security discretionary funding, but doing that will merely freeze spending at the highest funding levels we’ve ever seen. After all, announcing a freeze after first increasing your budget is like touting one’s fiscal restraint when they have cut up maxed out credit cards.

This “freeze” only applies to 12% of the budget, disregards massive new spending programs enacted in the last year and ignores mandatory funding, which is where most of the changes need to be made.

The President has spent more money in his first year in office than any other president in history, and simply stopping now does absolutely nothing to lower the amount of debt that gets passed to you and me, our children and our grandchildren in the form of increased and new taxes.

We’ve maxed out our debt limit, scared off our creditors and burdened future generations with unnecessary debt. The bottom line is that we cannot borrow, spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

U.S. Gives Yale Researcher $3.9-Million in Tax Dollars to Develop ‘Avatar’ Sex-Ed Video Game for Kids

CNSNews.com

February 05, 2010

By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

Another liberal feel good idea funded with our tax dollars in an attempt to control the mind of our children.  U.S. schools are woefully behind in math, hard science, and critical thinking skills. We need this to usurp the role of the family in this area? Teach sex, drug, alcohol refusal skills to nine year old children.  This is just another example of a loony left idea, paid for with our tax dollars. The congressman that put this pork into a bill must be shown the door in a future election.  A couple of observations, if this were such a worthwhile cause, what is wrong with Eunice Kennedy paying for it herself? Just an example of Kennedy style hypocrisy fund our bizarre ideas with other people’s money.  Random thoughts while observing the passing parade, J.C.

(CNSNews.com) – The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a division of the National Institutes of Health, is giving Dr. Lynn Fiellin, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine, $3.9 million over five years to develop a video game to teach “sex, drug and alcohol negotiation and refusal skills” to children 9-14 years of age.

The game will feature “virtual characters or avatars” that are guided by the children playing the game to make decisions about whether to engage in behaviors that put them at risk of being infected with HIV.

The game’s effectiveness in training children to avoid HIV-transmitting behaviors will be tested by having children as young as 9 play the game two days a week for a month—either after school or on weekends—at a New Haven, Conn., community center.

Drilling Down Into Obama’s Energy Promises

Big Journalism

Andrew Brietbart

Rich Truzbek

February 6, 2012

Obama and his Czar filled administration, could be no less transparent in forbidding U.S. Companies to drill off shore, while he loans $2 billion to Brazil to do so. At the same time, China has acquired drilling rights and is drilling off the shores of Cuba.  Dare I mention Florida? There can be only one answer, his agenda is to bankrupt our economy, keeping us dependent upon our enemies for energy. Let’s just keep sending our money to the Saudi  Sheiks  instead of developing well paying jobs in our own economy. In the State of Disunion speech Obama mentioned U.S. nuclear power, LOL, let’s file that under when hell freezes over.  Would it be proper to accuse the Obama administration as the “Party of No” when it comes to developing and putting people to work as a result of a non-existent Energy Policy?  Random thoughts while watching the passing parade, J.C.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama tossed a couple of sops to popular opinion, promising to support: A) nuclear power, and B) offshore drilling. James Hudnall did a brilliant job of dismantling Obama’s atomic promises, pointing out that even if the President happened to be uncharacteristically sincere in this case, no new nuclear plant will be built in a dog’s lifetime, even if the pooch happens to one of those little yip-dogs that seem to live forever. Based on what we have seen of his administration so far, the same is true of Obama’s newfound commitment to offshore drilling.

Suspending reality for a moment, let’s assume that burning fossil fuels will indeed result in catastrophic climate change. According to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, “we can’t drill our way out” of this supposed problem.

Actually, we can.

Burning natural gas is a much less intensive carbon intensive way of generating energy than burning any other fossil fuel. There are a couple of reasons for this. When you burn coal, just about all of the energy generated comes from turning carbon into carbon dioxide (a chemical reaction that releases heat). When you burn natural gas, the energy comes from two reactions: one that turns carbon into carbon dioxide, and another that turns hydrogen in water. Thus, from the start, natural gas generates less greenhouse gases for the same amount of energy produced. Complete Story

Dems block vote for plan to expand charter schools

Sadly, most people that vote for the democrat ticket fail to understand is that keeping people uneducated and ignorant will insure the eventual dependence on the government as the vast majority of uneducated kids are left behind. Liberal Education Policy Fails To Educate! The failed liberal programs are all about power and money. They fail to acknowledge the true costs if a public school education. Random thoughts while wondering how soon it will be for the electorate to wake up and smell the coffee, J.C.

January 18, 2010

BRENDAN SCOTT and CARL CAMPANILE

New York Post

ALBANY – Angry parents yesterday ripped Albany for putting the teachers union before kids, as lawmakers moved to block the expansion of charter schools — jeopardizing New York state’s bid to win $700 million in federal education funds.

“They know better. My son be damned!” fumed Dan Clark, whose son, Dan Jr., is an eighth-grader at Democracy Prep Charter in Harlem.

“What this fight is really about is power and money,” Clark said. “The legislators are afraid of the unions.”

The deadline is today for the state to apply for the federal “Race to the Top” cash — and lawmakers still had not reached an agreement on how to revamp the charter law to put New York in the best possible position to nab the funds. Talks at the Capitol were expected to continue today, with the application deadline looming at 4:30 p.m.

Parents, many of them minorities fed up with lousy schools, said lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves.  Complete Story

Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public

Andrew Breitbart

Big Government

by Vince Haley

February 9, 2010

World's Shortest Book: Truths of The Obama Administration

As I continue to report upon the lies, factual inaccuracies, and obfuscation of this administration it dawned upon me.  I could spend a hell of a lot less time with a new site called, www.truthfulstatementsfromobamaadministration.com  This administration is, was, and always will be based on  lies. The economic model they choose to turn our country around has never worked. Until the majority are voted out on November 2nd, nothing is likely to happen.  Random thoughts while observing the passing parade of crooks, thief’s, and corruption in Washington, J.C.

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job.  Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people.  It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.  Complete Story:

PUBLIC UNIONS BLEED TAXPAYER TO HELP DEMS

February 9, 2010

Investors Business Daily

Michael Barone

Once again the O’bow’a administration distributes our tax dollars in a matter that requires a deep investigation, possible Grand Jury, if people are indicted, go the trial, and are found guilty, great way to use government housing at the gray bar hotel for the dirt bags responsible.  Random thoughts while observing the passing parade and wondering is their no end to the fraud and deceit this administration will pull?, J.C.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson.  He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism.  But he is doing his best to increase the power — and dues income — of public-sector unions, says columnist Michael Barone.

For example:

• One-third of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments — an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions.
• And it was a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen.

Meanwhile:

• The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning more than $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.
• Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle.

Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic Party, explains Barone.  But it may not turn out to be a perpetual-motion machine.  Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods.

The next Congress may not be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by public-sector unions, says Barone.  Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s.  Or they may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas.

Obama’s Democrats have used the financial crisis to expand the public sector and the public-sector unions.  But voters seem to be saying, “Enough,” says Barone.

Source: Michael Barone, “Public Unions Bleed Taxpayer To Help Dems,” Investor’s Business Daily, February 9, 2010.

Complete Story:

Not only was the $2.5 million dollar Superbowl ad on the census a waste of taxpayer funds, see below

Government to launch $340 million ad campaign touting the 2010 Census

By Jordan Fabian - 01/04/10

The Hill

Well, it seems like we got just a taste of it yesterday, but more of our tax dollars  will  soon be wasted.  Advertisements for the census?  $340 million dollars, hello Washington, anybody that isn’t brain dead home?  Random thoughts while wondering when adults will finally return to Washington and the current crew goes out to the sand box for a very long recess,  hell, let them play in play in passing traffic, a sand box would cost us an additional billion., J.C.

The United States government is poised to launch a $340 million advertising campaign to help popularize the 2010 Census .

Why Not? It won't be worth anything in the near future!

The promotional campaign, which USA Today calls “unprecedented,” includes a road tour as well as television, print, radio and outdoor ads.

The official population count is conducted once every decade and is used to determine the allocation of congressional districts as well as the disbursement of billions of federal funds for states.
Conservatives and liberals last year accused one another of politicizing the Census. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) in October accused Democrats of wanting to count illegal immigrants in the Census in order to boost their congressional majorities. Democrats have maintained they do not plan to count illegals.

Meanwhile, civil rights groups have long said that minorities have been under-counted because they say the Census is inaccessible to non-English speakers and the economically disadvantaged.

$80 million will be spent on ads targeted toward racial and ethnic minorities and non-English speakers. Some ads will appear in foreign languages such as Spanish, Arabic and Yiddish, according to USA Today.

The road tour will last through April and will hit major cultural and sporting events such as Mardi Gras in New Orleans, San Francisco’s Chinese New Year, the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500 NASCAR race and the NCAA basketball Final Four.

The government will also pour $140 million into media ads, including $2.5 million for two ads set to air during the Super Bowl pregame show. The Super Bowl is known for its expensive rates for ads reaching an audience of nearly 100 million people.

A 30-second spot directed by Christopher Guest and starring Ed Begley Jr. will headline the campaign. Source:

Gallup: Majority of Democrats have positive image of socialism

Hot Air

Socialism is not the Answer

February 8, 2009

Well of course they do. If they were students of this type of economic system, which I seriously doubt. They would know that the countries that have chosen it were way ahead of us, going south,  prior to the recent economic collapse in the U.S.  While they like to blame evil profits and greedy banks, they fail to remember the root cause of the melt down, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. resulted in the current economic situation.  Oh course there is more to it, but the socialistic policies of taxing and spending and not caring a damn about the budget, the deficit, and the current unfunded liability of Medicare and Medicaide of $107 trillion, (that’s right trillion) are all socialist in nature.  It’s not about us, it’s all about them and their insatiable  lust for power and controlling our lives. It’s the reason they will be voted out of office in 201o and 2012. Random thoughts while observing the passing parade of socialists and liberals that prefer to be called progressives.

Barack Obama complained at the House Republican Conference that the GOP had mischaracterized ObamaCare as “a Bolshevik plot.”   His allies made hay earlier this week from a poll from Daily Kos that showed 63% of Republicans believed Obama to be a socialist.  However, a poll by Gallup released yesterday shows that such a label would endear Democrats to Obama — since a majority of Democrats have positive attitudes towards socialism (via Power Line):

More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of “socialism,” while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives. …

One Hell Of A Lot More Than We Need

Americans are almost uniformly positive in their reactions to three terms: small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. They are divided on big business and the federal government, with roughly as many Americans saying their view is positive as say it is negative. Americans are more positive than negative on capitalism (61% versus 33%) and more negative than positive on socialism (36% to 58%).

Democrats and Republicans agree in their ratings of several of the terms, but differ significantly in their ratings of others — in particular, capitalism, the federal government, and socialism.

On capitalism, both Republicans and Democrats have majorities with positive attitudes, but at 72% to 53%, the difference is significant.  Two-thirds of Democrats have a positive image of the federal government, compared to just 27% of Republicans.  On big business, the difference is only eight points, 54% for Republicans to 46% of Democrats, which may show how much small businesses are valued when compared to the capitalism numbers (97% GOP, 95% Dems).

But of course, the big difference is on socialism.   Only 17% of Republicans have a positive image of socialism (and where are those 17% anyway?), while 53% of Democrats feel positively towards it.  Gallup doesn’t break out independents in this poll, but in a separate breakout, only 39% of moderates have a positive image of socialism, while 20% conservatives and 61% of liberals do.

As Obama and Nancy Pelosi keep pushing for greater government control of the health-care and energy sectors, the comparisons of Democrats to socialists will get stronger.  That may not turn off the Democratic base, but it could explain why so many independents have fled the Democrats and are pushing back against the Obama-Pelosi agenda.

Source: